Stylish slow living on the sleepy Kenyan coast | Travel

Thrusting spades into the sand, Swahili workmen fill their bags with the material, which is still used to build houses on Lamu. Their laden donkeys form part of a daily dawn parade: they trek across the dunes while bottle-green waves suck at the shore and calls to prayer ripple on the breeze.

It’s a timeless scene unchanged for centuries on an island where many aspects of the outside, modern world have been kept successfully at bay.

A former hippy enclave once deemed off limits for fear of terrorist attacks and now open again for travel, Kenya’s Lamu archipelago rediscovered its mojo during the pandemic. Sandy, car-free streets and open-air villas became a sanctuary for European Covid refugees, Nairobi expats escaping lockdown and a crowd of